


The Good Talk

by JadedPandaGirl



Series: Witchy Bussiness [16]
Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Action, Cannot Spit It Out, Dante is really being a chicken here, Demons, F/M, Gen, Love Confessions, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 13:31:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16450892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JadedPandaGirl/pseuds/JadedPandaGirl
Summary: Dante airs his thoughts on a sensitive subject to an unlikely audience.





	The Good Talk

**Author's Note:**

  * For [firemoonlily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/firemoonlily/gifts).



> I should be finishing art commissions or working on my novel or at least writing a half-decent DMC story for my fanon. 
> 
> Instead I'm letting my friends egg me on and writing stupid little shorts like this. Otherwise they just won't get out of my head.

Dante liked the sound of sun-dry weeds underfoot as he walked through the wheat. The sky over his head was almost impossibly blue and endless, dotted with a few very white, very fluffy cotton clouds. The air was filled with the light crunch of the trodden brush. It was hard to believe that such a lovely day hid such a nasty threat.

Ahead of him, a line of trees in dark, foreboding green broke the seemingly endless sea of cereal ready for harvest, creating a boundary between the earth and the interminable cerulean sky. The peaceful breeze should've been reassuring, that he was soon to reach the much-coveted shade of the glen in this scorching summer heat.

Dante absently reached out as he walked and dragged his fingers over the ripe crops. The whiskers of the wheat felt silky and yet a bit rough, the husks smooth and warmed by the sun.

He was actually impressed. A field of gold under a punishing summer midday sky was a new sort of work space for him. Most of the time, he hunted demons in dank and depressing caverns, filthy back streets under a yawning moon, through moldering mansions and castles and in one memorable occasion, all around a big, ritzy whorehouse.

Another breeze rolled through the field, and Dante's eyes narrowed. Yes... there it was.

No birds. No cicadas. Not a sound of a living thing.

Nothing... except the crunch and snap of dry grass. He had stopped, facing the tree line and the susurration of the grass continued. There was no breeze.

The footsteps were silent but Dante felt them in the ground; they were heavy, ponderous and ever so careful. The crunching of dry grass was minimal, you could easily be fooled into thinking it was just the breeze... but it wasn't.

He heard the metallic hiss of the scythe cutting the air and moved; the fell blade passed a mere breath over his head as he ducked, narrowly avoiding being sliced in two. He felt the blade neatly cut off some of his hair. But there was nothing there -- or so the creature wanted him to think. He kept moving, dancing just out of reach of the scythe reaching for him, guided only by the sounds it made, whistling through the air and drew his gun and aimed at the invisible force.

The report of the gun startled a bunch of starlings out of the trees, finally causing them to flee in a blind panic.

"There you are..." Dante said with a small smile.

The bullet had struck true and surely enough, there was no more hiding. The demon was ridiculously tall and very lanky, an eldritch elongated form, a parody of a human scarecrow. It bled blood and dirt, for pity's sake, a dark, foul muddy substance that stained the wheat a filthy red. It even wore stretched overalls and had a large and frayed wicker hat on its misshapen head -- it could've been an old sack once upon a time, with features slashed cut to reveal a core of sickly, weeping red. A pathetic wisp of matted hair protruded from under the edges of the sack, the sad remains of a once bushy beard.

A real mockery of a farmer and a scarecrow, complete with a huge scythe. Now this is new, Dante thought, points for originality.

"GET OFF MAH FIELD," the demon boomed, brandishing the scythe in horrid bony talons. "IS MINE! _MAAHN!_ "

"And all the bodies under it?" Dante asked casually.

"TH' EARTH'S GOTTA EAT TOO!" it croaked.

"Ah, that old story," Dante tutted and evaded another swing of the scythe. "So you're tendin' the fields and your wife's lording it over at the farm. Smart, nice division of labor."

Now he could hear the human in that demonic shell, it cackled with a bizarre sort of fondness, really.

"MAH MARGIE KNOWS 'OW TER KEEP A GOOD OL' HOME. WE'LL HAVE YER LITTLE WITCH'S BONES FER DINNAH TONIGH', BOY," the old bastard cackled.

Dante paused, hands on his guns and then swept his arm around. "Gotta say, 's a nice location, old man. Ya got your fields, ya got an orchard... smart to advertise for workers; I wonder, where's most of 'em? Here, the orchard, the barn -- I bet those pigs of yours get real nice and fat on the kids tryin' to make a living wage in this goddamn economy."

"DARN TOOTIN' THEY DO," it drawled and readied the scythe for another swing.

"And you thought, what better way to keep things goin' at your age than to make some sweet deals and be a devil," he sighed.

"SOMETIMES BOY, YEH JES' DO WHAT YEH GOTTA DO," the demon boomed, thudding closer on its tall, lanky legs clad in filthy old denim.

"So, tell me something old man," Dante said carefully. "Honest question here, one man to another."

The demon suddenly hesitated, scythe drawn back. "ER... YEAH?"

"How'd you know you were ready to marry your wife? Before all the demon shit, I mean," the hunter asked casually.

The hesitation of the demon lengthened awkwardly. Its shoulders almost relaxed and the blade lowered just a hair. "UH... I JUS'... I JES' KNEW, AH GUESS? YEH DO KNOW WE'RE--"

"Because I've been thinking... I've always kinda scoffed at romance and love. Stuff for _other people_." Dante said thoughtfully, shrugging.

"BOY, YA _DO_ HAVE AN'NDERSTANDIN' O' WHAT'S HAPP'NIN' 'ERE?" the demon insisted, confused.

Dante appeared to not hear him. "Probably because I don't think it'd stick for me, 'cuz it hasn't in a long-ass time," he continued. "I mean, I hunt demons for a livin', who's going to want to sit through that?"

"AW SHUT YER GOB, BOY!" the demon snarled and lunged at him.

Dante gracefully leapt over the swing of the scythe and took note of the rough shuffling sound in the grass around him, just as a few scarecrow-looking things burst out of the soil -- all those corpses weren't going to waste, no siree, not on this cunning old man's watch. The scarecrows were nothing more than bits and pieces of different bodies stitched together haphazardly with rags and odds and ends, and allowed to rot around underground for demons to crawl into and then puppeteer.

Lovely.

Dante was still grinning. "You know, I tried a couple of times, to make something work. But it's _me_ we're talkin' about. Doomed from the start, really."

The first scarecrow lunged, all skeletal fingers burned to savage, soot-stained points. Dante put his guns away and drew Rebellion. It caught the harsh sunlight overhead and glinted angrily as it came down in a hard swing. The head of the creature made an awful crunch as the broadsword cleaved straight through it in a hail of dirt, twigs, bones and rags.

"Could even say I almost forced it," Dante said. "So of course it never worked out."

Another of them was coming for him from the back and he easily spun round and cut it asunder with a single swing to the sound of an earthy snap.

"So that got me thinkin'..." he said, turning and twirling his blade in one hand casually, to flick some dirt off it. "Maybe it just ain't for me, y'know? Too uncertain. Too... fragile."

The demon hurled itself at him, rattling with the shake of dirt and desiccated, wiry flesh. "QUIT MESSIN' 'ROUND, BOY!"

Dante heard the scarecrows closing in and swung his sword hard; he caught the scythe at the apex of its arc and deflected it, sending the lanky demon reeling, and with a mighty front kick, sent it sprawling, sliding backwards across the wheat.

"But you know what?" Dante carried on. "Something bothered me."

Another scarecrow was crushed to pieces from a swing of Rebellion.

"Because when I was a stupid little punk, I met somebody who was also a stupid little punk, in her own way," he said, turning the sword blade down to draw his gun and shoot down another scarecrow.

"Now, sometimes it happens that I _like_ people. I like their attitude or what have you," he said. "And I liked her. An angry, spiteful little girl, and I _liked_ her. Because she had more guts than I did, back then; more spine. And she didn’t take any of my bullshit."

Gunshot after gunshot the scarecrows fell, in bursts of dirt and rags, scattering more bones to the earth. The demon pulled itself together, rose to its formidable, spindly height and snarled.

"Ya know what I mean, grampa?"

"QUIT YER YAMMERIN' YA LITTLE SHIT!"

"And what do you think I did?"

Dante jumped clean over the angry swing of the scythe, watching it cleave through wheat and stones and even the dirt, leaving a curved trench in its wake as he sailed over the demon's arms. He landed smoothly and spun, crashing Rebellion into the back of the demon's leg. It shrieked and dropped to a knee with a thud, in the dust. It swung the scythe angrily and forced Dante to back away gracefully.

"I let 'er go, like an idiot. For _years._ Gone; no clue where she went. The worst part is, I tried to ignore it," Dante sighed. "I tried telling myself, I'll get over it. I'll forget."

The demon lunged at him again, slower this time, the scythe flailing wildly in the hot summer air.

"Except, I didn’t," he chuckled ruefully, knocking the blow away with a hit of the sword. "It just sat there, under all my bullshit, like something ya toss in the attic and forget about. I thought it'd rust and crumble away."

The demon's body made an awful scrunching noise when the sword cut through it; dirt and blood spattered like mud across the ground, frayed rags fluttered about. The demon snarled and swung the scythe's butt hard, pushing him back.

"But she's back now and I'm... well, it’s come up again and I've got all these ideas runnin' around my head," Dante confessed. "And I’ll admit, I've been a chicken, just keeping it to myself. Because ya see..."

He bent briefly away from a clumsy swing of the scythe, punctuated by the demon’s snarling as it tried to drag itself towards him, with its damaged leg hanging pitifully from the pelvis with a bit of rotted string and gristle.

Dante chuckled and held his arms up before letting them drop. "...I'm startin' to realize, I still like her. In fact, I _want_ her."

"PISS OFF!!" howled the demon, trying to swing at him again.

“I can't even believe I'm saying this out loud," he sighed.

He bent just a little to duck under another swing of the scythe, with the sun at his back. He thrust the sword ahead of him in a vicious lunge. The impact was hard and gritty, like pushing the blade through loose, muddy dirt under a layer of canvas.

"I really might just _love_ that Twig."

"COCKY LITTLE...!!" the demon coughed. "I DON' GIVE A FU--"

Dante withdrew the sword, seized the hilt with both hands and spun, bringing it down in a whirlwind blow that cleanly snapped the demonic scythe in half and bifurcated the demon's torso with ease, sending all the pieces tumbling backwards, to follow the soft incline of the ground. The ground under him shuddered, not like an earthquake, but more like a dog shaking off a bunch of dead, bloated ticks.

"Thanks for the talk, old man," Dante sighed and lazily spun his sword in hand before securing it to his back. "Feels good to get that off my chest. I think I owe the Twig a little talk when we're done with this shit."

He trudged his way back to the farm house, the white of the low country house stark against the dry grass and the gleaming sky. The air felt lighter already. And that funny little feeling he'd gotten since they first crossed into the boundary of the farm was starting to dissipate. Good.

When he walked through the smoking, scorched remains of a doorframe he found Tess dusting her hands calmly, standing over a heap of dissolving material, with more of the same scattered around her. The house interior was a real mess of peeling wallpaper trying to hide old blood stains, pockmarked with scorch marks, furniture blown to smoldering pieces and the floor covered in more scorch marks and the signs of multiple magical circles, some crude and some far more slick and dangerous-looking -- all of them extinguished, thankfully, but not entirely faded yet.

"Aw, I missed the show. Too bad," he just said, shrugging.

The redhead witch smiled up at him, her nose crinkling cutely under her freckles. "They weren't very well-trained or prepared, Dante. Plus the witch was over a century and a half, even with the demonic enhancements. It didn't really take all that long."

"Couldn't have waited, could ya?" Dante said, making a very good imitation of a pout.

"Oh come on, hoping to sweep in for the rescue? Be my knight in shining armor?" she teased him.

"Maybe a little," he said cheekily with a shrug. "You know me, I like makin' an impression."

She rolled her eyes at him. "You like being the center of attention, that's for sure."

"Now, now Twig, can you blame me--" 

"Aw fuck's sake, just git married ya pair o' shitsuckers!"

They both paused as the raspy curse hung in the air and they stared at its source. One of the bodies was not quite breaking apart, trying to crawl away. The misshapen form was one of the witch's sons, big, nasty brutes all of them, looking like they'd been hewn from rough sandstone rather than made of flesh, made all the worse-looking by the many traits of demonic taint all over them.

The boy's three eyes spun sickeningly at them, twitching as it crawled towards them.

"Well, I clearly didn't hit him hard enough," Tess muttered.

The wretched creature was put out its misery with a decisive thump of snapping wood as Dante brought Rebellion straight down into its neck, punching the blade's tip into the floor and completely severing the head.

"Funny thing to say though," Dante chuckled, nudging the twitching head aside and pulling Rebellion out of the floor. "Think that's all of them?"

"Yup. I should just burn the house down, to be sure though. The basement's clear," the witch said thoughtfully.

Dante managed to look mournful. "And we didn't even bring any marshmallows."

She chuckled at him as they walked out while parts of the wretched interior started to sizzle and catch fire. Dante draped his arm over her shoulders as the farmhouse ignited into a ball of flame behind them.

“Y’know, Twig, we should go get some pizzas and have a little talk…” he said.

“Oh jeez, what did you do this time?”

Dante sighed and let her bump against him as they walked away from the burning house to the sound of crackling wood. “Why the heck do you always think I’ve _done_ something?”

“Because you usually have,” she giggled.

He rolled his eyes. “Guilty as charged,” he sighed. “But nah, this is just a talk. Just… one I’d rather we be comfortable for.”

She raised an eyebrow and then nudged him a little with her elbow. “Oookay. I suppose that’s code for ‘can I crash at your place, Tess?’. We can get pizza. Frankly, I’ll need it after this long-ass drive. And then you can, I dunno, confess your undying love to me or whatever,” she chuckled and fished around her pockets for her car keys.

Dante was very, very careful to school his face into a mildly amused smirk. “Yup, or whatever,” he said under his breath as she got in the driver’s seat.

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to profusely apologize to the American South as a whole. The idea was just too good. I hope I did not completely butcher the regional slang and accents in my attempt to use it as flavor.


End file.
